Task: Review Requirements
This task describes how to review the requirements work products.
Disciplines: Requirements
Purpose

The purpose of this task is to formally verify that the results of the requirements tasks conform to the customer's view of the system.

Relationships
Steps
General Recommendations
Purpose General recommendations for each review.

The following guidelines are helpful when reviewing the results of Requirements:

  • Always conduct reviews in a meeting format, although the meeting participants might prepare some reviews on their own.
  • Continuously check what is produced to make sure the quality is as high as possible. Checklists are provided for this purpose; refer to the checklist for each work product. You can use them for informal review meetings or in daily work.
  • The reviews should concentrate on the requirements currently being developed.

The following roles will participate in the review meetings:

You should also consider the following roles for participation in review meetings, especially at key milestones:

It is important to find the right balance between including the desired review participants and keeping the review manageable and productive. Care should be taken to include only those participants who will contribute to achieving the objectives of the review. It is usually more productive to hold several focused review sessions with a smaller number of participants, than to hold one review involving many.

Recommended Review Meetings
Purpose To define the scope and the goals of the review.
To define the approaches used for each specific scope/goal combination. 

Normally, you should divide the review into the following meetings:

  • A review of change requests which impact the existing requirements set.
  • A review for each of the key requirements work products.  If the system is large, break this review into several meetings, possibly one per key functional area.

Even if you can review everything at the same meeting, you probably won't get approval of your conclusions the first time. Be prepared to carry out new reviews for each new version of the requirements work products.

Prepare Review Record and Document Defects
Purpose To document the review results.
To ensure that identified defects are documented. 

Following each review meeting, the results of the meeting are documented in a Review Record. In addition, any defects are documented in accordance with the project's change management process.

Further Reading

See: [BIT03] Chapter11.



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